I love to read stories about people who meet Christ and come to see Him for Who He is. I have been told once or twice that I have a little too much imagination at times, but I don’t agree.
Jesus was teaching one day near the temple and drew a great crowd, because his stories were compelling and told with an authority people had never heard. As he taught, a commotion arose around him and suddenly the crowd parted as two men came through the crowd, dragging a dishelved woman. I doubt she had much more on than a ragged robe; she had been caught while having sex with a man to whom she was not married. She had probably been part of a trap on the part of the men who dragged her into the crowd. The men who laid the trap had no interest in her at all; she was merely a small cog in a plot to discredit Jesus and she had walked into it.
“Master,” they said, in great confidence. “We just caught this woman in the very act of adultery! The law says she should be stoned to death, but what do you say, wise teacher?”
Now if you’ve got two or three working brain cells, the first question that pops into your mind (at least in the way my suspicious mind works) is where on earth is the man with whom she was caught? Adultery , like the tango, takes two. Otherwise, I think it’s probably called something else.
The men were a part of the enemies of Jesus, which included most of the prominent religious leaders of the Jewish nation. They were desperate to discredit this disturbing man from Galilee who preached and taught about a God of love and light and threatened the established religion of the day.
The woman lay on the ground in front of the teacher. She had to be terrified and shamed beyond imagination. The law did mete the penalty of death by stoning for the sin of adultery. She could only lay there, waiting for the agony of the first stone to strike her. But it never came.
Jesus understood what was happening, of course. I don’t think he could read minds, but he knew the heart of man and the evil it is capable of. He simply stood quietly for a moment and finally, he stooped and wrote on the ground.
The only other place I can find the finger of God writing is in the Old Testament where He wrote the Law. Nobody knows for sure what He wrote that day, but I believe He did it again that day. Whatever it was, the leaders of the crowd that day could read it clearly.
There wasn’t a sound. Jesus wrote again and then stood up and said, “He who is without sin may cast the first stone.”
He didn’t deny the law; He simply, in His inimitable way, clarified it.
“If you have never committed sin yourself, then you are qualified to judge her. If, on the other hand, you might want to think this through again…”
Those aren’t his exact words, of course. My interpretation. The following scene is rather amazing, but the best part is still to come. The men, one by one, beginning with the older men and moving to the younger ones, began to drop their stones. See, they already had their agenda worked out; they were eager to carry out the law. There’s nothing quite so satisfying as seeing that all the rules are rigidly enforced. Unless, of course, we’re the one that got caught.
Silently, the men dropped their ammunition and left the scene. Oddly, in shame or compassion for the woman, the whole crowd dissapated. And this, my friends, is where it really gets interesting.
Only two people are left. The woman, who is still at Jesus’s feet, and the Master Himself. In what I still consider one of His greatest acts, He says quietly, “Woman, where are your accusers?”
It’s not the question. It’s the way He speaks to her. That word ‘Woman’ is the same word He used from the cross when He said to His mother, “Woman, behold your son.” It was respect, endearment and love. It was everything this woman had never known and it was the one gift she needed more than anything in the world. She was a sinner, an adultress, nothing in the world’s eyes. And He give her a dignity and a sense of love she had never known in her life.
But the most remarkable thing in this whole story is how she answered Him. She knew in that moment who He was! And her answer was simply, “No man, Lord.”
“Men may not condemn me, but the most important question now is, do you, my Lord and God?”
I think at this point, He reached down and lifted her up and smiled as He said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.”
Wow! What a God we serve!
